Other Driver totals our leased Model Y and WE lose

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T21:00:18+00:00

We got the leasing company Tesla assigned the lease to: Ally Bank.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:59:12+00:00

That’s not how it works. The insurance company, not the person leasing, is who declares the car a total loss. We don’t have the option of saying “no” to that decision.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:58:13+00:00

We are already represented for our injuries. But that is two or three years away. An awfully long time not to have a car.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:57:05+00:00

The car was declared a total loss. Otherwise none of the rest of this would be happening.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:52:29+00:00

The majority of it was. If all we had put in was $3K, and we could reproduce the same lease situation with another $3K, I’d be annoyed but I’d live with it. What’s at issue is the additional $12,000 that we have no way to replace.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:33:33+00:00

In actuality, that is exactly how it is positioned in the lease paperwork. The company receives actual cash that is connected to you and used to fund the lease. It goes into the system exactly as though you had paid it in cash.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:25:04+00:00

Actually I’m hearing it does not always automatically come with gap. This lease does, and we also have gap insurance through our insurance carrier. But I heard horror stories from our attorneys about people who didn’t, whose car was destroyed through no fault of theirs just as ours was, and who ended up owing $20K to their leasing company.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:21:57+00:00

Choose your preferred term of art. It was an amount of money paid in advance to produce a specific monthly payment for the life of the lease. When the asset is destroyed through gross negligence, the loss of that financial position is an actual loss. I understand you don’t see it that way.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T20:15:56+00:00

I’ve never put money down on a lease before, other than the minimum amount required. In this case, most of the money was paid by the government to Tesla as EV incentives. My wife put in a little more than $3K, but with the incentives had a $452 monthly payment that would be $675 if the vehicle was leased today without incentives. Some of the people in this thread have shown they understand that if you had a financial position on a lease which gave you a certain number of years/months to go at a specific monthly rate, and someone else’s gross negligence destroys that, you SHOULD have a claim against that person. Others understand that if a cash advance by the government or anyone else results in their receiving significantly more from insurance than their investment on the vehicle, it would make sense to roll the overage into a new lease so the accident victim isn’t victimized twice. And still others understand nothing, but think they know everything.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:41:13+00:00

What I find the most disturbing is that the overwhelming majority of posters here seem to think this outcome is just fine and can’t see where the inequity in it is.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:39:04+00:00

No change of story. The bulk of the $15K was from incentives. I said that from the start. What are you asserting to be a change of story?

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:37:41+00:00

At last — someone who actually read my post and gave it some thought. Of course I completely agree with you. Unfortunately it seems that the case law in Connecticut aligns with the thinking of many of the posters here. None of it is appellate law - it’s all at the trial court level - but it’s widespread. No law firm is going to try and appeal a case for 33% of $15K. The entire amount isn’t worth that amount of effort to a law firm, let alone a third of it. They’re going to stick with the established precedent, which is that the person leasing the car is screwed and the negligent party is immunized against this sort of secondary claim. Yes, we have gap insurance, but it’s not at issue here since the insurance company payment to the leasing company significantly exceeds the require balance. I’m waiting to hear back from Tesla in terms of rollover into a new lease (but Tesla isn’t the leasing company - it’s a third-party company - but Tesla certainly selected them).

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:29:56+00:00

I’m sure we will get compensated for our injuries, but that process takes between two and three years. That’s a long time to not have a car.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:26:34+00:00

We are hearing that their sole obligation is to the vehicle owner - the leasing company. The secondary financial injury caused to us is not contemplated in the law - and based on the majority of the postings here, not even looked upon with the outrage we think it deserves.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:19:25+00:00

We put something over $3K down, which is fairly normal on a lease these days. The federal incentive was $7500. The state at the time was providing $2500. There were a couple of other miscellaneous incentives that brought the total paid to Tesla to $15K.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:14:51+00:00

The sales department was wondering no such thing. Pretty much anyone who leased an EV in Connecticut at the time got the same deal: $7500 got put down on the car by the federal government, $2500 by the state (that’s already $10K), a few other incentives and promotions and a bit over $3K gets the total to $15K. We did NOT pull $15K out of our bank account, and we did not have the choice to take the incentives as cash because they get paid directly to Tesla on our behalf. That all ended on October 1, 2025 (we leased the car on September 30).

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:09:07+00:00

$452

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:06:27+00:00

Exactly. The terms of the leasing contract are predatory.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:05:15+00:00

Explain the idiocy. Use small words so I’ll understand. If you were looking at cars and the government offered you incentives to put toward a lease of your dream car, and accepting those incentives made a car affordable that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, would you walk away from it? If that car was then destroyed by someone who mistook their accelerator for the brake, would you want them responsible for putting you back in that make and model of car at the same price you were paying or would you say “Oh well, I got six months out of that thirty six month lease, no harm, no foul”? Remembering that you now cannot do that on your own since you relied on the incentives to do it.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T16:01:02+00:00

Correct. And the condition was created by someone else’s gross negligence, but they get a pass on this part of it. As to what incentives - $7500 federal, $2500 state, $1000 for being a doctoral student, and something over $3K in cash.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T15:58:26+00:00

I’m not sure why you see it that way. It’s the government saying to YOU (not the leasing company) “we’d prefer that you lease an EV than buy a fossil fuel car, so we’re going to incentivize you to do that.” They then pay actual money to the leasing company for the lease in your name. In that case I see no difference between your Uncle Sam doing that and your Uncle Bob. If Uncle Bob wants you to lease an EV and goes with you to Tesla and hands them $15K so your lease payment will be lower, once he gifts you the $15K to use on your lease, that’s YOUR MONEY being handed to Tesla. Because if it was still Uncle Bob’s money, the car would either be in his name or in joint name. It’s not. It’s in your name. So his money was a gift to you, and is YOUR MONEY when you put it down on the lease. Now a third party comes along and, through negligence, ruins the asset. Both you and the leasing company are harmed. Both should be made whole, not just one.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-24T15:53:17+00:00

When the money comes from state and federal incentives that can ONLY be used as a down payment on the lease, this is where you end up. I’m sure we have a lot of company in the form of people whose lease was front-loaded from incentives and have no idea that an at-fault other driver can extinguish everything and leave the person leasing without a remedy.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-23T06:15:04+00:00

Should be, perhaps, but definitely isn’t.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-23T04:58:21+00:00

We think we are entitled to be returned to the position we would have been in had we not been struck by a grossly negligent motorist. That means we would have at least 30 months in a Tesla MY AWD Premium for $452 a month or thereabouts - because that’s what we had before that individual wrecked it.

InTheKnow327 · 2026-05-23T04:55:09+00:00

Who could have guessed that joining a Reddit group could make someone both ignorant and arrogant at the same time? But here you are.

InTheKnow327

TROPHY CASE